Salma Mousa on Contact Theory (and Football)

About this Podcast

Can a group with a shared religion become accepting and welcoming of another minority group?

Contact theory rests on the premise that if we spend time with a person from a different group we will come to appreciate the other person and perhaps even their group. Salma Mousa questions whether we can “unlock tolerance on both sides and reduce prejudice” when differing groups come together. Using the football pitch as a field site, Mousa addresses the need for experimental tests of contact in social science. Mousa has previously investigated the incidence of hate crimes in Merseyside following the signing of Egyptian soccer star Mohamed “Mo” Salah to Liverpool Football Club. Following the incident there was an encouraging decline in the number of hate crimes in the area and in anti-Muslim tweets from Liverpool FC fans.

This podcast explores Mousa’s experiment of football and otherness, aiming to determine whether “positive social contact across social lines can reduce prejudice, can build friendships, [and] can overall improve relationships between groups even in postwar settings, like Iraq.” The experiment was conducted in partnership with a Christian community organization who were helping Christians and Muslims displaced by ISIS. They formed a team of Christian football players and randomly introduced three or four new players who were either all Muslim or Christian. They monitored the behaviors and attitudes of the original players both on and off the pitch for 6 months after the season had ended.

The research takes place in the difficult context of postwar Iraq and the subjects have suffered from their experiences fleeing ISIS. The promising findings support contact theory because, as Mousa explains, “to find some evidence that these guys actually became friends and we changed something in these communities, I think is positive, especially given that these communities are persecuted and highly distrustful.”

Transcript
Key

DE: DAVID EDMONDS

SM: SALMA MOUSA

DE: This is Social Science Bites with me, David Edmonds. Social Science Bites is a series of interviews with leading social scientists, and is made in association with SAGE Publishing.

Salma Mousa is a big soccer fan. She’ll watch any game with the Egyptian and Liverpool star, Mo Salah. She’s also starting out on her career as a social psychologist. So, how to combine your hobby with your academic interest. Well, she began with a study of Islamophobia in Liverpool, showing that Islamophobic hate crime had declined since Mo Salah signed for the team.

And then, she led a study in northern Iraq. It’s been featured on the cover of Science Magazine. Salma Mousa, welcome to Social Science Bites.

SM: Thanks so much for having me.

DE: We’re talking today about contact theory and football. You’ve conducted what, I think, is a remarkable experiment. Tell us what you did.

SM: We set out to learn whether positive, cooperative contact across social lines can reduce prejudice, can build friendships, and overall improve relationships between groups, even in really difficult settings like post-war Iraq. So, to do this we joined with a Christian community organization in northern Iraq, which was working with Christians and Muslims displaced by ISIS. And what we did was, we recruited Christian amateur soccer teams. And we conducted a randomization, where we created a set of new soccer leagues. And we then flipped a coin to determine whether those teams would receive an extra three or four Muslim players added to their team, or whether they would receive an extra three or four Christian players added to their team, and tracked them over time.

DE: So, what was randomized was whether the Christian teams would have some Muslim players or not.

SM: Yes, so, the randomization was whether your team received Muslim players, or whether they received other Christian players.

DE: And this took place in Erbil, which is a town I’ve been to. It’s quite close to the Turkish and the Iranian border. And it’s a predominantly Kurdish population, which has had more or less autonomy since the first Gulf War of 1991.

SM: So, we set up a series of soccer leagues. And some of them took place in a Christian town in between Mosul and Erbil, and another took place in a Christian suburb, or neighborhood, in Erbil. So, Erbil, as you say, is on the Kurdish side of the border, and the other study site was on the Iraqi side of that border, a bit closer to Mosul.

DE: And then you measured behavior for how long? How long did you conduct the experiment for?

SM: So, we wanted to know whether playing on a soccer team with someone from an outgroup, how that can affect your everyday behaviors toward people from that group. And so, we measured a series of attitudes two to five weeks after the program ended, after the leagues ended. And then we also collected information on behaviors up to six months after the leagues ended.

So, the leagues themselves took place for about two months. These guys were training together and competing every week. And then we tracked them for six months after that.

DE: Now, before we get to your results, we better put the experiment into a kind of intellectual framework. It’s testing what’s known as contact theory. Just explain to us what contract theory is.

SM: Contact theory is an idea popularized by Gordon Allport in the 1950s. The idea actually came about through conversations in the US about school desegregation. And the original theory says that contact across group lines that meets certain conditions, so, it should be cooperative. You shouldn’t be competing against each other. You should be working toward a common goal.

The contact should be endorsed by leaders or norms from both sides. And that the contact should place the participants on equal footing. So, even if you’re unequal in terms of power status in society, at least, within the given program, there should be equal power status. So, the idea is that contact that meets these conditions is going to create this positive experience that’s going to unlock tolerance on both sides and reduce prejudice.

DE: So, whites and African-Americans together, under these relatively benign conditions, you would expect, according to the theory, according to the hypothesis, that they would feel better about each other after a period of contact.

SM: Exactly, and classrooms, you’ll notice, meet a lot of these conditions.

DE: So, Gordon Allport was writing about this way back in the 1950s. Since then, how often has it been rigorously tested?

SM: We have a lot of studies about contact. But we need experimental tests of contact. And the reason why it’s important to have an experiment, rather than just observe how people are in the real world without intervening, is because there’s something called the selection problem. So, people who are already more tolerant, they select to be in areas which are more diverse. And they choose to have friends who are more diverse.

And so, if you look at the relationship between contact and tolerance, you’re going to see it’s a positive correlation. But that’s because tolerant people choose to engage in contact, not the other way around. So, to know how the average person would respond to contact, you need to have this experimental component, where you randomly assigned the contact.

DE: Which is what you did. Tell us what the results were at the end of the football league. When you went to test their attitudes, what did you find?

SM: I found that, in terms of attitudes, that those who are on mixed teams were more likely to say that they believe that it was better to treat each other as Iraqis first. And that it was arbitrary to divide Iraqis along ethnic and religious boundaries. Although, I didn’t see much change in their specific attitudes toward Muslims. So, it was more like the abstract idea that we can all get along better.

And this aligns with what I found in the behavioral results, which I think are even more interesting. I found that behaviors that capture how you feel toward the other guys you met in the league– so, voting for a Muslim to receive a sportsmanship award, training with Muslims six months later, and registering to be on a mixed team next season– those behaviors, that capture this tolerance in the realm of soccer, on-the-field outcomes, you can say, those were improved substantially among mixed teams, compared to those on all Christian teams.

Moving toward behaviors that reflect general tolerance toward Muslims in other non-soccer contexts, so, I looked at whether you were more likely to go to a restaurant in Mosul, which is a Muslim dominated city, or whether you’re more likely to attend a mixed social event that was open to Muslims in your neighborhood. And lastly, I looked at whether you donated your survey compensation to the church, as opposed to a neutral NGO that serves both Muslims and Christians. And I didn’t see any movement there.

So, it really seems like contact, at least in this really difficult post-war setting, is more effective at unlocking tolerance between peers, and acquaintances, and friends, but less effective at building generalized tolerance off of the field, or in other social settings.

DE: So, would it be fair to sum that up by saying that Christians, after playing with Muslims on the team, would be more tolerant towards those individuals. But they didn’t generalize that tolerance. And you didn’t see a change of attitude towards Muslims, generally, beyond members of the team.

SM: That’s exactly right. And so, this, I think, adds an important wrinkle to our understanding of contact. The original theory assumes that, those individuals you come into contact with, that if we can improve relations and attitudes toward those individuals, that those positive effects are going to extend to the entire group that person belongs to.

And so, I think these findings show that this assumption needs to be tested. And we need to make a distinction between the individuals that we come into contact with and the entire group that they belong to. And maybe making that leap is harder or easier in some contexts than others.

DE: And you tested attitudes how? This was through surveys, or through interviews? What was your methodology?

SM: We measured attitudes through surveys. I also have some qualitative evidence on how the social norms on the teams were becoming more acceptant. And that I got from interviews.

We also have data on red and yellow cards, basically to ensure that there was no backlash effects. And to rule out that, when all Christian teams came up against mixed teams, that those matches were more aggressive. And we can, in fact, rule that out. There’s no increase in red or yellow cards in those types of games.

So, we have a few different sources of data. We have surveys. We have interviews and observational evidence. We have red and yellow card data. And we also have these six behavioral outcomes that capture on-the-field and off-the-field tolerance.

DE: And the relationship between Muslim and Christian players, did you see deep friendships developing? Or was it all at a fairly superficial level?

SM: I think it’s fair to say that a lot of really profound friendships came out of this. Not with everyone, but we could see superficial and deeper connections being made that weren’t there before. For example, one of the mixed teams noticed that the Muslim players on their team had to pay a pretty heavy cab fare to come to the trainings. And they decided to all chip in and pool their resources to cover their cab fare to come to training every week.

We noticed that, at the beginning of the leagues, most of the Christian players were speaking in their Christian dialect, which was not understandable to Muslim players. Then, over time, and with some nudging from the coaches, we see that there was this switch over to speaking in Arabic, so that the Muslim players could be integrated. We also saw that, after the leagues ended– it was the Champions League final a couple of years ago– and we saw that one of the mixed teams had invited their teammates to come watch the game with them.

And this seems like something, maybe trivial, or pretty light touch version of friendship. But in Iraq, and in this province, even bringing along a Muslim to come to a coffee shop, or a bar to watch a soccer game with you, is a big deal. And you need to get permission from the bouncers, and from the security, and from the management, to let those guys in. So, when we stumbled across that, they just invited them and negotiated with the restaurant or the bar to let them in to watch the game, we knew that something had clicked.

DE: Those are very uplifting stories. But your general gloss on contact theory is quite a pessimistic one. That contact might work at an individual level, but can’t be generalized necessarily to attitudes to the whole group.

SM: So, I’d say two things to that. The first is that, even finding positive effects toward people who did come into contact with each other– so, toward teammates and league mates in this setting– finding those positive effects in such a difficult environment– we’re talking about post ISIS Iraq, between displaced people who have left their homes for years, who came back to see their cities razed to the ground– to find some evidence that these guys actually became friends, and we changed something in these communities, I think is positive, especially given that these communities themselves are persecuted and highly distrustful.

So, that’s one way to look at it, is, even in these fragile settings, you can find some positive effects. The other side of it is that, I think, because the setting was so fragile and so difficult, if you were to repeat this in peacetime, or where you don’t have these really heavy group identities and this kind of collective trauma, you might be able to find this generalization of effects. The takeaway I want people to have is just not assume that these effects will always generalize, and to start thinking critically about among which groups and in what settings could we expect generalization.

DE: So, you’ll be very aware, of course, of the replication crisis, which seems to have struck social psychology particularly badly. The notion that actually interesting claims are not necessarily replicated when people try and do them again. Are you worried about that? Is this something that we should attempt to replicate? All there different experiments that we should be thinking about to reinforce your results?

SM: That’s a great question. So first I want to thank the editors of Science for publishing this. Because this isn’t one of those home run papers where everything was fine and dandy. And contact changed everything. And it rebuilt these devastated communities. And soccer can change the world. I don’t think that is the takeaway from this paper.

So, I think in showing that there is nuance here. And, I think, the main contribution of this paper is, one, it tells us something about intergroup relations in post ISIS Iraq. But, I think the larger point is that, as social scientists, we need to be moving toward measuring real world behaviors and understanding how people navigate their everyday lives. And not just relying on surveys that take place one or two days after the program ends.

And, at the same time, we have this publication bias, where only the interesting results get accepted to journals. And so, all the null findings stay in people’s file drawers. And so, that’s also leading to the replication crisis.

I would love for this to be replicated elsewhere. I know there’s a lot of different experimental studies of contact happening now. And, I think, as long as we really think critically about how our settings and the communities we work with are unique, and what pieces could be generalized, then we can build this evidence base that doesn’t need us to run a million RCTs, or randomized controlled trials, to be able to understand how contact works. It can get us there a little bit faster.

DE: Right, because the problem is, what can be generalized? As you’ve described, you have a very unique set of circumstances. And if you try to reproduce that in San Francisco with Chinese-Americans, and African-Americans, and white Americans, who can say whether you’d get anything similar or not?

SM: Yeah, I completely agree. And I think this is a frustration that many people have with experimental evidence. On the one hand, the advantage is that, as researchers, we have this, almost, clinical control over what the program will look like. But at the same time, you start getting into more and more artificial scenarios that are really difficult to understand how those map onto real life.

So, what I like to do is put my piece in conversation with other studies of prejudice reduction in post-conflict or active conflict settings. And what we are finding from similar studies in Nigeria, in Rwanda, in Israel, is there is a much more nuanced image of contact in these settings. So, at the least, I think we can say that contact is not a home run, post-conflict or during active conflict.

And putting that into conversation with other work, even during peacetime, that looks at how majority groups versus disadvantaged groups respond to contact, we know that minority group members are less responsive to contact. They’re a bit more skeptical of the whole enterprise. They have a higher stake in the outcome of intergroup relations. And it needs to be coupled with them feeling like their voices are heard, and maybe even a policy tool to make them feel safe, and real structural change. As opposed to what you would need from a member of a powerful or advantaged group, where it’s much easier to shift their attitudes in many ways.

So, with those two strands of the literature, I’d say this fits in well with our expectations. But we do need to not just replicate, but extend this and test other forms of contact, and ideally focus on these touchstone national institutions, things like schools, things like the military, where it’s easy to generalize from, in a way, because these programs are already happening in the real world. And so, the more we move away from a lab, I think the better it is for science.

DE: And practically, given that our aim is that we all get along, practically, what are the policy implications of this work?

SM: I think the policy implications are that any environment, where people from different groups are coming together– whether it’s for school, whether because they’re assigned to be dorm mates, whether they have military conscription or training, whether it’s a book club or a soccer league, or some other civic organization– the people who have control over these environments would benefit from understanding how to design a setting that’s optimal for intergroup contact. And so, what I found in my setting was that successful teams, those who had a more positive experience, they really did well in terms of the effect On intergroup relations and the friendships that were formed.

So, how can we better design these institutions so that contact is equal, and so that it’s not political? And it’s based on this other shared identity that’s not something that’s immutable, like ethnicity or religion. And how can we engineer that to be the most meaningful and positive interaction possible, so that people can take something away when they leave the class at the end of the school year? And when they finish their military service, or when they move on to a different company or workplace, how can we have this lasting effect?

DE: Can I ask about your personal motivation for this? Is it just intellectual curiosity and it is a fascinating topic, or is there something else going on?

SM: I’m from Egypt, and I’ve spent most of my life growing up in the Middle East. I know how these ethnic and religious divisions can really drive communities apart. And, unfortunately, in Iraq you have a situation where social trust has been totally obliterated over the past couple of decades.

But at the same time, I like to think of myself kind of like an engineer, but with social science background. So, I see this problem in front of me and I want to fix it. Because I think that diversity in the Middle East and, particularly religious diversity, is such an important part of our national fabric. And it’s something that’s dwindling away. We’re just emptying our countries of religious and ethnic minorities.

And I profoundly think that that’s sad. And that we lose something really important when that happens. And the status of minorities in the Arab world is a litmus test for so many other markers of development in the Arab world. It’s a marker for democracy. It’s a marker for social development, political development.

And if I can do my part to try to come up with a solution, and to test these different strategies for making life better for people of all communities, so that they would actually want to stay there and keep contributing to that national fabric, how they’ve done for thousands of years, then that would be an honor for me.

DE: Salma Mousa, thank you very much indeed.

SM: Thank you.

DE: Social Science Bites is made in association with SAGE Publishing. For more interviews, go to socialsciencespace.com.

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